a world of tea drinkers and dragon riders

March Wrap-Up! || 2018

Hey guys! It’s that time again . . . time for a wrap up! March was an interesting month for me. I was overseas for a good part of it which always throws some curveballs – if you want to see what I was up to then scroll down below to the What About Me section to read!

I want to apologise for still not being as active as I used to be, as well. I’m currently working on balancing out my life between work, writing and blogging and IT’S HARD. And don’t ask how many reviews I need to do, it’s a scary number. Thank god I love it. But I’m hoping that as I settle into a new routine that seems to be working for me I’ll have plenty of time to pump out some content for you guys and talk at you like there’s no tomorrow.

Now, as always, before we dive into me, myself and I let’s have a look what is going on around the book world! I will put a friendly reminder out there to all of you that is isMother’s Day coming up (in Australia and whichever other countries do that at this time of the year too) on the 13th May so quick! Go buy her an amazing book!

THE BOOK DEPOSITORY

Enjoy free worldwide shipping with the Book Depository! Competitive prices and the best range of books you ever did see. This month make sure you check out what’s in the Bargain Shop section and grab a steal or take a peek at the book oscars for some great reads. Time for some new books? Have a look at the latest new releases or some fiction to celebrate women!

WORDERY

Even more free shipping! Wordery also offers worldwide free shipping and books at competitive prices as well. Make sure you go and check out their book of the week and their fantastic selection of children’s fiction. Thinking of travelling soon? Make sure you see what travel books they have on offer!

ANGUS & ROBERTSON

Who’s ready for mother’s day?! Woo! It’s never too late to grab her a book so quick! Go see what books your mum would love. Curious as to what the best books of 2017 were? Check out A&R list of the best fiction from last year! And if you missed the Stella prize award winners then don’t worry, you can see them all (and grab a copy!) here.

BOOKTOPIA

Shop Booktopia’s Top 100 and save 25%! Not to mention their epic, mega, huge children’s books sale that’s on at the moment, too! And they’ve got you covered for mother’s day too! Look at all the options you have.

To Kill a Kingdomby Alexandra Christo

I enjoyed this a crazy amount. I’ll have a review coming for this one real soon too, it’ll be one of the next ones I write (she says) so you can look forward to that. I love the cover and was so intrigued by the plot – all in all I was pleasantly surprised by how solid a novel this one is.

Review to come

Stitching Snowby R.C. Lewis

I finally finished it! This was the Squabbling Dragons’ book club pick of the month a couple of months back and I just got stuck on it. I ended up enjoying it but I was wholly blown away. I prefer C.J. Redwine’s retelling of Snow White in The Shadow Queen – but the steampunk elements in this one were fabulous.

Review to come

Tiger’s Promiseby Colleen Houck

I FINALLY READ THIS. If you don’t know, Houck is my favourite author and I worship her. I’ve been meaning to get around to this novella for at least 100 years and FUCK ME it surpassed expectations. To be perfectly honest I wasn’t expecting it to be as good as the books but sheeshkebabs, this is intense, beautiful, amazing and every bit as WOWFUL as the series. *drools*

Review to come

Frostbloodby Elly Blake

This was the February/March book club pick of the month and it had me seriously sitting on the fence. It was good but badly written and oh boy do I struggle with books that aren’t written well. I really liked the story though and that has me hesitantly reaching for the next book? But I probably just won’t ever get around to it, ya know?

Review to come

Good Omensby Terry Pratchett & Neil Gaiman

This was unfairly brilliant. It made my all time favourites list and I find myself constantly craving to dive back into the story. I listened to it on audiobook and that was probably the best experience of my life. I have no words, this is a work of sheer talent and joy – THANK YOU CASEY FOR FORCING ME TO READ IT.

I put up one of my last videos for the moment over on Booktube. If you missed it, I’m going to be taking a break from it. I really love making the videos but I found it too hard to do that and run my blog, and at the end of the day I love my blogging more than anything.

So my final video was talking about historical fiction and you can check that out HERE.

Looking for a new and exciting book club to join? Come have some fun with Casey and I over at the Squabbing Dragons! We’re a Goodreads book club and we focus on reading Sci-Fi/Fantasy books that are underrated! This April, starting on the 17th, we’ll be reading Snow and Roseby Emily Winfield Martin – so quick! Go grab a copy.

Genres Read:

Pages Read:

Total: 1,627

Progress Towards Goodreads Challenge:

18%, or, 18/100 books

Ireland has put me slightly behind my goal because I wasn’t reading as much there. So I should be a little further along but I’m still bang on track for a great reading year.

Well, March was an interesting month. On the 7th I flew to Ireland and didn’t come home until the 24th. So that meant I was busy and distracted from reading for the majority of the month. And whilst I tried to use the downtime for blogging and writing, I didn’t. Oops. Unfortunately, it was not happy reasons to be in Ireland, my grandmother passed away so I was there for the funeral. All went well and it was lovely to see family over there.

That meant that I also had some fun! My dad and I spent a day in Dublin and did some fantastic things. We wandered into the National Gallery and saw a beautiful Caravaggio which was mind blowing and we also did some shopping at the huge bookstore there, Hodges & Figgis. It’s multi-storey and has so many amazing books. Oh boy I love a good bookstore.

One of the most notable things we did was go to Trinity College Library. GUYS. This is the amazing bookstore that you see on the internet. It has the long room which is basically a cathedral of books. I was drooling, dying of happiness. We also saw the Book of Kells when we passed through.

We saw the St. Patrick’s Day parade down in Cork and had a pretty chill time all up. There’s this wicked asian street food chain called Ramen that we found – HIGHLY recommend. Positutely delicious.

Other than that I’ve been working hard and trying to get on top of my reading. I’ve definitely fallen behind my goal of 100, currently I am 8 behind. But we’ll see how we go. I’ve also started playing Rollercoaster Tycoon again – THE THROW BACK, my goodness.

Movies I watched:

Up, 2009: 8/10 stars
This was a re-watch and I enjoyed it as ever. So emotional, so entertaining and so brilliantly fantastic. I mean, if you haven’t seen Up then I don’t know what you’re doing with your life.

La La Land, 2016: 6/10 stars
I was honestly very disappointed with this one. The hype for it is insane but whilst the plot was interesting I felt very like whaaat? by the end of it. Where is my list of unsatisfying endings?

Cars 3, 2017: 7/10 stars
Not gunna lie, I was surprised by how good this was. When any film series enters it’s third instalment we all get a bit nervous as to how they’re going to continue making it good. This was leaps ahead of Cars 2, however, and totally worth watching.

Coco, 2017: 8/10 stars
WHY DOES PIXAR ALWAYS KICK YOU IN THE FEELS? You’re just not expecting this to be as emotional as it is but hot dog you’ll be weeping by the end. All the feels, guys, all the feels. I bloody loved this.

Despicable Me 3, 2017: 7/10 stars
Once again! Totally surprised by how much I liked this. The plot was a little eh overall but it’s just funny to watch and thoroughly entertaining – so you kind of don’t care. It was certainly a lot better than the Minions movie.

The Shape of Water, 2017: 7/10 stars
I rated this a 7/10 but I’m not sure if that’s honest. In truth, I didn’t like this all that much. But the concept is brilliant and I want to express my awe of it through my rating. The mute character as a lead was awesome and the development of her relationship with the monster is cool. But uncomfortable is probably an excellent word for how I felt about this film on the whole.

The Darkest Hour, 2017: 8/10 stars
RIGHT UP MY ALLY. This was fantastic. The film is WWII historical fiction looking at when Winston Churchill took power as Prime Minister at the start of WWII. With the glories and honouring that goes on about him, history tends to forget how unpopular he was and what he stood against, so this was great for looking at that.

Wanted, 2008: 6/10 stars
Great film, not my thing. I thought it was funny, action-packed and pretty cool. But I’m not a fan of shooting action films that are just every day people killing others. Especially the concept with this one. I just find the whole concept of watching other people shoot other people for fun odd. It’s gotta be a fantastic setting for me to dig it.

Crocodile Dundee II, 1988: 6/10 stars
I haven’t seen the first one but boy did I enjoy this. It’s classic trash, in a way. Solid Australian character doing some hilarious things to get the bad guys. Seriously, if you’ve got some time to kill do yourself a favour and plonk down in front of the TV with some knitting and this film.

Loving Vincent, 2017: 8/10 stars
Holy. Shit. This film is insane. I hope lots and lots of people take the time to watch it because jeeeez this was talented. The film is does in a unique way – over 100 artists were involved to paint each and every frame – YES YOU HEARD RIGHT – so it’s a moving picture (literally) about the life of Vincent van Gogh. As told per his 800+ paintings. Incredible.

Paddington 2, 2017: 7/10 stars
This was almost better than the first, I couldn’t believe it. I was expecting it to maybe be semi-good but I was like damn this is how you make a sequel. Still star-studded (even more so!) and packed to the brim of Paddington’s adventures I couldn’t recommend it more.

TV Series I watched:

Fawlty Towers, series 2
I am still very slowly making my way through rewatching all of these with Jayden. Usually, I would blame this on my inability to watch TV (although I think I’ve just proven when I put my mind to it I can watch a lot of films). Nope, I actually can’t watch more than one episode of this at a time because it is STRESSFUL I say. Basil has zero luck 100% of the time.

Victoria, series 1
Yes I’m still watching this – MOVING ON.

Dragons: Race to the Edge, series 6
I mean, there was a new season released so did we really expect I’d be doing anything else but watching it? Be proud, dear friends, I’m savouring it and haven’t just binged it all in one go. Claps to me.

Again, I am so sorry for the loss of your Grandmother Kirstie. Despite the sad circumstances, it sounds like you did enjoy some lovely family time in Ireland. Trinity College Library is on my Libraries to visit in my lifetime bucket list! I’m so happy to see you were able to experience it.

I also read Good Omens last month, but for some reason I had a hard time with it. I also listened to it via audiobook but found I got distracted easily. I’m going to try to give it another go in print form, because I really did enjoy the story & found the concept fascinating.